Love of Nature Exhibit at Art Center Morro Bay

Love of Nature at Art Center Morro Bay

Art Center Morro Bay hangs its fall exhibit, Love of Nature, from September 17 through November 2 at 835 Main St, the downtown gallery with the Rock mural on its wall. The subject is the one every local lives inside and every visitor drives Highway 1 to find: the ocean, the bay, the marshes, the mountains, and the plants and wildlife of the Central Coast, seen through the individual styles of the region’s artists.

Expect familiar scenes rendered with personal feeling, alongside imaginative and abstract takes that treat the coastline as a starting point rather than a postcard. The range is the point. One wall might hold the estuary at low tide in careful detail while the next abstracts the same water into color and motion, and the show rewards moving slowly enough to notice how differently each artist answers the same landscape. In a fast-moving stretch of the year, a room full of work about tidelines, back-bay light, and coastal wildlife is a standing invitation to slow down.

An opening reception runs Sunday, September 21, from 2 to 4 PM, the best chance to meet the artists whose names hang beside the work. The Art Center has anchored this corner of Main Street since the Morro Bay Art Association formed in 1951, still volunteer-run and still mounting a full slate of exhibits each year, and a stop here pairs naturally with the galleries and shops within a couple of blocks.

Autumn fills in fast around town; the rest of the season’s openings, music, and outings are gathered on the event calendar.

Image: Ken Christensen